Shackleton Awarded Microsoft Cloud Solutions Competency

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Written by Philip Magson, 18 June 2015

Shackleton recently received a new Microsoft competency for our work helping clients with the Office 365 platform. Beyond simple industry prestige, the competency award comes with a set of business benefits…

Working in IT is more than just a one way street of directing services towards clients - there is plenty to be gained from engaging with industry providers, who can develop your expertise levels, offer professional accreditations and help raise the profile of your company at local and national levels. In Spring, Shackleton achieved the Silver Small and Midmarket Cloud Solutions competency from Microsoft. We're thrilled to receive the award, which essentially demonstrates the ability of a Microsoft Partner company to provide Microsoft customers with the highest standard of cloud services.

What is involved?

The Small and Midmarket Cloud Solutions competency looks for of both technical and sales expertise in Microsoft Office 365. Partners who are aiming for the award need to meet a set of criteria:

Customer feedback: three Microsoft Office 365 customer references must be provided from the past 12 months. Once completed, the references can be used to renew the competency for up to two years.

Performance: a sales target of 150 copies of Office 365, over the last 12 months, must be met - 10 of those must be new customers.

What are the benefits?

There are plenty of reasons to work for a Cloud Solutions competency - not least an increased level of support for your online cloud services, including market prioritisation, online advice and a regional Microsoft contact. At Shackleton we wanted to show our clients and our professional partners that they could have complete confidence in the work we do for them.

Attaining any kind of Microsoft competency demonstrates a high level of qualification and ability: in this case, our clients know we are able to address their Office 365 issues and are backed by a wider set of resources provided by Microsoft itself.

One more reason to choose Shackleton

Office 365 is Microsoft's fastest growing commercial product - so it makes a lot of sense to give potential and existing customers one more reason to choose your company to implement and service their software. At Shackleton, we've made no secret of our support for cloud and hybrid business solutions in our clients' IT deployments - so we're delighted to be able to have our skills and expertise endorsed by the Microsoft award.

Of course, Cloud Solutions competency isn't an end-goal, it's a commitment to the future. We're going to keep working to make sure our customers continue to benefit from the same level of service they've come to expect from us over the years.